


Stuff Your Stocking with AUs and Candy

by feldman



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Artists, College, Detective Noir, F/M, Genderbending, Heist, Inspired by GIFs, New Jersey, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-09 11:00:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5537420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A set of six alternate universe collaborations with <a href="http://nitavonteese.tumblr.com/">Nitavonteese</a>, for iadorehulkwidow's Secret Santa gift 2015: Noir, Heist, New Jersey, Artists, College and Virtual Reality...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hone In

**Author's Note:**

> [Original post on Tumblr, with Nitavonteese's wonderful gifset that inspired it.](http://hwsecretsanta.tumblr.com/post/135576175486/hone-in-feldman-handypolymath-the-moment-i-saw?is_related_post=1)

The moment I saw Felix Romanoff’s body come up from the water, where it had been riding against the dock with each wave of the rising tide, I knew whoever killed him had been trained, had made it quick, and didn’t spare the pain. Boning knife to the kidney, done right, the poor bastard bled out before he could work up to a scream.

Mrs. Romanoff poured coffee for Bill and I even as we declined her hospitality, she was a suspect, after all, despite her full set of knives all accounted for, her neat kitchen all unpacked within a week of moving from New Mexico to LA. Bill’s the one who called the Feds in. I think she knew he would, even before he did.

Maybe she confided in me because I’m a sucker, because I drank her coffee in her kitchen and recognized the yellow of old bruises under the pressed powder. Maybe she saw that recognition, and that’s why she looked me up, wanting someone to know her for who she really was, once, before the end.

She didn’t expect to get out of it alive, you see. I was an insurance policy, payable upon her demise.

She was waiting in my sitting room, could have gutted me like a fish before I cut the light on, and maybe she did that night after all, with those steady eyes and trembling hands. The negatives, the encryption pads, the radio transmitter, the tiny canister that weighed more than the 45 caliber in her purse, she gave them all to me, whispered nightmares in my ear as she clung and kissed and was so desperately tender I felt like a last meal.

She didn’t think I would come after her.


	2. That Voodoo That You Do So Well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Original post on Tumblr, with Nitavonteese's wonderful gifset that inspired it.](http://hwsecretsanta.tumblr.com/post/135328534015/that-voodoo-that-you-do-so-well-feldman?is_related_post=1)

Natasha had counted on very few things for this job, and she had backup plans for all of those. What failed her was the assumption she hadn’t known she was making… that she had long ago killed anyone capable of seeing through her masks or deceiving her in turn.

Thing was, the magician had always been honest with her.

“I’ve got maybe another week at this gig,” Doc Incredible had a terrible stage name, soft brown eyes, and hands that were always in motion, but it read as nerves instead of prestidigitation. “I’m not very good at this kind of thing.”

Her smile had turned genuine, thinking his very discomfort conveyed a strange charm. It was the saving grace of his act. It made him excellent patsy material. “So what are you good at, Doc?”

He’d flipped the Ace of Spades out from nowhere and said, “Physics, Ms. Romanoff.”

Well, what’s a heist if not the expert manipulation of time and space, mass and motion, to relocate a certain poundage of linen rag etched with ink and foil? Distraction, electrons, paper, words, shadows, and expectations deceived.

He played the part she gave him, but then he played her.

She should be grateful the only damage was to her pride, aside from the fifty percent cut he skimmed, and what he’d somehow done to her hair the moment she lifted his sly note from her purloined briefcase, a minty tingle running up her arm to the top of her head. Unnerving as it was, that misdirection allowed her to escape after all.

“Blondes have more fun,” he’d written in shiny green ink on a wrinkled fiver laid atop half the currency and bearer’s bonds she’d expected, “but brunettes live to tell about it.”


	3. Code Cafe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Original post on Tumblr, with Nitavonteese's wonderful gifset that inspired it.](http://hwsecretsanta.tumblr.com/post/135779873446/code-cafe-feldman-handypolymath-his-cousin)

His cousin has never really had boundaries, but this is a topper. “That doesn’t excuse putting a profile up behind my back.”

“You’re acting like it’s a kick me sign–just meet her for coffee like I said you would, today at six at VerdeBean–”

“You pretended to be me?!” Sometimes Bruce regrets not punching his cousin more when they were boys. "What is wrong with you, Tony?“

“Like we have time for that; it’s already after five. Don’t worry, it was all in text, I was self deprecating and used a lot of big words. Like self-deprecating.”

“And she agreed to a coffee date with your parody of me–”

“I also sent her pictures from Pete’s graduation party, you look like a lumberjack but it’s the only ones I have where you’re smiling–”

“You sent her–I feel like a puppet. This is not cool, Tony.”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t send the shots of you in the purple Speedo after the party became a rager.”

He grabs his forehead and squeezes hard. “There’s pictures of that?”

“So you gonna stand her up?”

“I should.” Bruce’s phone beeps, and he flips through the links Tony’s sent because he’s incurably curious and, though he’d never tell Tony, planning on going to the coffee shop anyway to apologize for his cousin being a nosy shit. “You put my CV on here? I’m a lab tech, Tony.”

“Ha, made you look! And you got a fucking doctorate, your research funding turning to shit after the accident didn’t change that.”

Bruce shakes his head and opens the next profile. "What is it with you and snub-nosed blondes?“

"I’ll tell my Pepperoncini that, she’ll have your balls for a trophy.”

“I thought yours already took up most of her purse. Does she know you’re still on dating sites?” His phone beeps again and he opens the next set of attachments.

“She was watching Ace of Cakes at the time, but yeah, she helped me browse profiles. Did you see that Tasha did some modeling while she was getting her master’s in criminal justice and minor in Russian lit? Pep found the shots, high end lingerie.”

Bruce’s thumb pauses in the scroll and he swallows. “You know I’m not cut out for high-maintenance.”

“I told her you’re the kind of frog who isn’t looking for a princess. She said half the time she wears makeup it’s to cover the bruises from roller derby. She’s a Long Island T-Rex, goes by the name Smack Widow.”

“Fuckin A, Tony, you’re killing me.” He heads inside, pulling his t-shirt off on the way to the shower.

“So you’ll go? I knew you’d go. One thing you should know, though, before you go–I sound like Dr. Suess–”

Bruce thinks it’s more yappy Pomeranian, “I’m hanging up now, Tony.” Just as the call disconnects his cousin edges in the last word.

“PeppersentTashatheSpeedopics.”


	4. Good Fangs Make Good Neighbors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Original post on Tumblr, with Nitavonteese's wonderful gifset that inspired it.](http://hwsecretsanta.tumblr.com/post/135147888126/good-fangs-make-good-neighbours-feldman?is_related_post=1)

Smartest thing she ever did was take the buyout and get out of tech, trade in her tiny San Francisco flat for a beach house on Lake Michigan. Dumbest thing she ever did was buy that house only looking at it once, when the neighbor was gone, off installing a commission piece in another state. She had two weeks of serene gorgeous views, until he came home, fired up the welding torch, and started building another metal dinosaur on his stretch of scrubby beach, mere yards from hers.

A metal. Goddamned. Dinosaur. He’s made them for years, it turns out, skeletal sauropods all over the country.

The welding is the least of it, because he wears the thick hide jacket and full mask and it’s relatively quiet. She can indulge in a clean neighborly hate and still pursue a life of leisure, read maybe, or pull out the watercolors she hasn’t used since college. It’s when he breaks out the ball peen hammer, the sledge, the heavy files, when he’s crafting teeth and scales and claws with his shirt off and just that stupid hippy necklace swinging against his ridiculous seventies furry chest with each strike…

And that’s when she sees that his body of work has shifted, the piece in progress not another skeletal herbivore in a long line of them, but a monstrous copper dragon bristling with teeth and claws, shimmering with hammered scales turning green with patina.

She throws away the crusted shut tubes of watercolor, and stuffs a microcontroller in her pocket before padding over into his yard one sunset. “You know, if you’re interested in collaboration…I could program it to breathe fire.”


	5. U & Meaniversity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Original post on Tumblr, with Nitavonteese's wonderful gifset that inspired it.](http://hwsecretsanta.tumblr.com/post/136038901596/u-meaniversityfeldman-handypolymath-bruce)

Bruce was one of those troubled gifted kids who’d read whole swaths of every library he came across, hated busywork, tested off the charts and got into college by the skin of his mediocre grades. This is why he applies for the job at Disability Services, taking class notes for people, assisting others whose talents don’t fit easily into the system.

~

“Thing is, his notes are shitty.”

“Nat, language.” Crystal chides and throws the dart in her hand like a glance. "Little pitchers have big ears.“

“That’s for children.” Natasha swirls the dregs in her bottle of beer, her writing forearm encased in a cage inexorably stretching the shattered bones back to their previous length. "Wrong kind of pitcher.“

Crystal stares forlornly at the bartender. "Also, I have no pitcher.”

“Because you’re cheap.” As a non-trad student on the GI bill, Phyllis looks like a CPA and brings the calm soothing energy of actual adulthood. Also, she has a car, which is better provisioned than a Conestoga wagon. "Which is why you did shots out of my trunk instead.“

"I wouldn’t turn down a chaser.”

“I’ll chase you later.” Phyllis slides her glass over in appeasement.

“Why do you need a note taker again?” Crystal was fine arts, her current project blacksmithing a bunch of strange arrows for a traveling exhibit. She didn’t really get traditional pedagogy. "Why can’t you just go to lecture for the quiz questions and then download the recordings after?“

"Because Abnormal Psychology is a 500 level class, not a cattle corral freshman pre-req. Even if I resort to typing, I can’t take notes and keep up with the discussion, live or recorded.”

Phyll turns to Natasha. "So, shitty in the sense of being messy? Or cack-handed? Or lacking in substantive value?“

"All over the place–references to seemingly unrelated subjects, Venn diagrams, whole paragraphs written perpendicular, his outline convention is Byzantine.” Natasha tucks her caged arm close, leaning in to make her point. "His notes from the lecture on the cycle of violence featured the formula for calculating specific heat and several stick figure cartoons.“

~

"I offered to use the tablet instead, but she went off on how typing isn’t processed through memory the same way.” Bruce shrugs. "So I’ve been writing them out like she asked.“

"Well you should know Ms. Romanoff inquired about reassignment last week,” Nicola shakes her head, reassuring, “but she declined to fill out the form. Said she’d make lemonade out of it.”

Bruce wonders if this was before or after the argument that got them kicked out of the grad library, her defending Jungian fairytales about the shadow psyche with a calm gullibility he’s now realizing was designed to piss him off, break him out of his quiet professionalism, get him ranting.

He’s seen her in class discussions, it’s how she engages with challenging material.

~

“I mean, there’s a lot of processing and decision-making that occurs outside of consciousness, really vital stuff with huge ramifications, but calling it a monster of the dark is a childish and less than useful concept–”

Crystal gestures with the fletching end of the dart, "So you were trolling him.“

"Nat prefers to call it playing Devil’s Advocate.” Phyll gently smirks at the implausibly innocent look this gets her. "It elides the fact that what she’s playing with are people.“

"I’m here to grow and stretch as a person.” Natasha squares her shoulders. "He’s more interesting than the notes are bad.“

~

Bruce lets his freak flag fly after that, every cross-referenced concept, every impulsive comment, not just treating her notes as his own, but laying out the balance of what he would be thinking but not putting on paper for himself.

She makes an astute point about locus of control and the professor nods, while Bruce quietly fills in the dialogue balloons between a cheerful hammer and a glum nail and thinks, two can play.


	6. Roses and Clover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Original post on Tumblr, with Nitavonteese's wonderful gifset that inspired it.](http://hwsecretsanta.tumblr.com/post/136346480451/bynightafangirl-an-this-collection-of-aus-can)

They didn’t find him in Fiji. Nor in any of the little dirty forgotten corners of the world where they looked for him, knowing his proclivities.

Vision found him on the net, by feel, because he wasn’t leaving any material trace of being anywhere in the world, but a decent chunk of his consciousness was being modeled and interfaced with, dreaming on the net while his body presumably slept.

Somewhere. Frankly, unless the Other Guy was triggered, they stood little chance of finding him in meatspace. But his brain, even in an electronic jar, was a beacon.

Natasha is damp with sweat, sick with uneasy fear, the very idea of one person in her head, much less two…she forces one hand into Wanda’s hot slim grip, the other into Vision’s firm cool grasp.

“So you found me.” Bruce is sitting down to dinner in his mind, civilized and calm, and just as fake as his pleasant demeanor. "I’m surprised you aren’t giving me the personal touch, or perhaps shove. You know I’m a sucker for it.“

From Wanda, Natasha knows that Bruce has no idea he isn’t in reality. From Vision, Natasha understands he’s being held in stasis in a remote facility, and their best chance would be to pull the pin on the Hulk. All she has are her words, but she knows that’s not a problem.

“I would, but you’re so skittish these days…”

Bruce bares his teeth, not even pretending anymore that it’s a smile.

Natasha resigns herself to the task at hand, knowing this is going to hurt them both like hell.


End file.
